To maximize their retirement and/or entertainment dollars, many US and Canadian citizens select Mexico or a Central American country such as Costa Rica for full time or part time living. In addition to the lower cost of living, many parts of these countries offer heavenly weather, beautiful beaches, breathtaking views and great sport fishing. Left out of most benefit discussions is household water.
Most Mexican and Central American water systems are significantly different from what North Americans are familiar with. First, local regulations and inspections for safety are often lax or missing. Second, most sources deliver low flow, low pressure water to individual facility storage tanks called cisterns that can expose the water to additional contamination. Third, many of the water distribution systems are overtaxed and in need of repair thus causing entrance points for even more contamination. The overall potential for water issues confirmed by laboratory testing are bacteria, viruses, cysts, discoloration, insecticides, pesticides, waste chemicals, hardness, tastes and odors sometimes attributed to extremely high chlorine levels.
What to do? We often get requests for whole home reverse osmosis system from US and Canadian property owners in Mexico and Costa Rica. This is the Ideal solution and we have provided some. However, because of size, cost, power consumption, waste water, installation issues and future service, interest soon wanes. To address all of these problems, we developed the ESF PLUS in the early 2000’s. This compact, wall mounted, easy to install system treats every drop of water in a facility and provides safe, clear, soft feeling water at a fraction of the cost of a whole house reverse osmosis system with no salt or chemical used.
